A Day In The Life....

Woke up, got out of bed,

Dragged a comb across my head....

And decided to clean out the Mental In-Box......

Regardless of what happens today or over the next two weekends, the 2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament will be forever defined and remembered for 16th seeded University of Maryland - Baltimore County's unprecedented win over #1 Seed and #1 ranked Virginia.  Did I say "win"?  I meant thoroughly convincing dismantling of the Cavaliers by UMBC.  There was nothing flukey about it.

Two days after the end of that game, it is still almost incomprehensible that what happened happened.  That game will be remembered long after Duke or Villanova or North Carolina or some other NCAA Blue-Blood cuts down the nets in two weeks.  It will easily be one of the Top Five sports stories of 2018.  A game like that is why you follow sports.

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The University of Pittsburgh is looking to weasel out of the $9 million contractually agreed upon buyout that they owe Kevin Stallings after giving him the paper key last week.  It has been reported that they are claiming that an exchange between Stallings and a spectator in Louisville is "cause" for firing Stallings and not paying him the full amount of the buyout.  If that is the case, I have two questions:

1. If the incident in January is "cause", why not fire him then?  The University, in fact, publicly brushed off the incident and supported Stallings.  And it's not like firing him in January would have caused a distraction for a team that was on its way than 0-19 conference record.
2. Again, if the Louisville incident is "cause", then why cut the buyout in half (as has been reported) and offer Stallings anything at all?  Why not just say, "You're fired, you're getting bupkis from us, and if you don't like it, we'll see you in court."?

And I have stated many times, this has nothing to do with whether Stallings should or should not have been fired.  His record clearly indicated that he should have been.  This is all about standing up to what you contractually agreed to do when you hired the guy in the first place.  

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At one point yesterday afternoon I tuned into he telecast of the Pirates-Twins Grapefruit League game, and watched the Pirates score nine runs in a half inning wherein the Twins committed a couple of errors, a couple of others that weren't scored as such, threw over sixty pitches, and took over thirty minutes to complete.  About half of the players on both teams are guys who will certainly not play in the majors leagues this season, if they ever make it at all.  The regular guys who were playing (Francisco Cervelli for the Pirates and Dee Gordon for the Twins to name two of them) had to be thinking "What do I have to do to get out of this game?"

It's fun to tune into a Spring Training game on a cold wintry day, but those games can also be unbelievably tedious.  I'm ready for the real thing to start eleven days.